A blog devoted to astronomy / astrophysics and space missions

Galaxies

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the first detection in the distant universe of the carbon hydride molecule, or CH+. A team led by Edith Falgarone of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Observatoire de Paris, France, used the ALMA radio telescope to discover that cold and turbulent gas in galaxies of the starburst type such as SMM J2135-0102, nicknamed Cosmic Eyelash. This discovery will help to better understand the mechanisms of galaxy growth and the periods of rapid star formation.

An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes the measurement of the magnetic field of a galaxy that is nearly 5 billion light-years away from Earth, the farthest of which such a detection has been made. A team of researchers used the Very Large Array (VLA) to detect it not directly but thanks to a kind of magnetic footprint called Faraday effect that reached the Earth thanks to the light coming from a quasar that appears to us behind the galaxy studied.

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research that shows a new function of the “tentacles” of the so-called jellyfish galaxies. An international team of astronomers led by Bianca Poggianti of the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padua in Italy used the observations conducted during ESO’s GASP program with the MUSE instrument installed on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), discovering that the mechanism that generates those tentacles is the same that powers the supermassive black holes at the center of those galaxies.

An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes a research involving 16 of the brightest known quasars. A team of researchers led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) examined in particular those quasars’ infrared emissions to identify young hot stars in the galaxies hosting them concluding that a lot of them are forming, at a rate up to about 4,000 times higher than in the Milky Way.

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research suggesting that in primeval galaxies of the type called dusty starburst – because dust filters their light – star formation activity can be inhibited by the presence of a quasar. A team of astronomers from Iowa University used the ALMA radio telescope to locate the quasars and then other telescopes to observe them at various wavelengths.